September 29, 2012

"Who 'fears' black folks, period? Or gays? Everything you hear these days is about fears and phobia and hate. I usually dismiss it as rhetoric, but I am starting to wonder if that isn’t what is motivating a great deal of the citizens of this country. Maybe they really are afraid of their own shadow and hate the things that scare them."

So says commenter B Moe over in the comments to an open thread at Protein Wisdom — which I noticed because I saw traffic coming from there because, unlike the Freepers, at least they open up the pathway so readers can see the object of their criticism for themselves.

And then McGehee says:

Althouse typifies a new hyphenation: the Hormonal-American. If only we could bring a bunch of state legislators up to today from 1920 or slightly before, to see what these Hormonal-Americans have done to the country, maybe they’d return to their own time and just repeal Prohibition a decade early.

The old joke — women shouldn't have been given the right to vote because they're emotional. I was making that joke myself, making that joke as a joke, as I was out biking and conversing with Meade about the very material that would later take the form of the post that's made all the wingers cringe, "'Just How Racist Is the "Obama Phone" Video?'" Well, you men have only yourselves to blame. We didn't have the power to vote for the right to vote. You men gave it to us.

And then some commenter named Car, whose icon is a baby — McGhee is an old cowboy and B Moe looks like the Disney Br'er Bear — Car says:

Can we all stop reading Althouse now? Can we get Glenn to give her up?

This is a classic theme in anti-Althousiana: jealousy that I have readers and, especially, that I get Instapundit links. (Hey, I'm a guestblogger on Instapundit right now. If I wanted, I could go over there myself and write a post lambasting Rush Limbaugh for playing and replaying that racial-fear-stimulating video over and over. But I'm keeping it here, in this cozier place, where I let commenters in. And there are 600+ shots at me in the "How Racist?" comments thread.)

Car says:

And, please, when was the last time Althouse was IN a city? Women like the one Rush played, over and over, you SHOULD fear them- or the segment of society who they represent. She’s not there for the upwardly mobile, educated black. She was there shouting her membership as one of the failures of black society- the takers.

Well, thank you, Car. You're proving my point. You do have a highly emotive mental picture of those terrible black people, the very brain zone Rush was stimulating.

Our cities, and it’s [sic] denizens, are going down like the mutherfocking bootleg fireworks. A cop came into our shop and said whole areas are basically lawless, and that people need to protect themselves. And Ann just wants to turn the other cheek and pretends it’s not happening, because it’s not happening in her line of sight.

See?

And it’s not a function of color. The cities just HAPPEN to be populated by folks that could look like Obama’s son.

I think "it’s not a function of color" is intended sarcastically. He's saying I should look at the reality he knows, and it's full of terrible black people.

And they also just happen to be represented by race pimps who don’t care what happens to “their people” as long as they get their own filthy lucre as they pretend to fight the power.

But, you know, I’d like Ann to head to Detroit, get our of her car on the East side – you know, near Kelly and Gratiot, and use her rational mind to get to know those folks. Don’t fear those folks, Ann. VOTE for Obama.

Put your head back in the sand, Ann. Rush probably made that woman up.

So he's reinforcing my point! That video stands for a large group of people who really are the problem and voters ought to wake up and get scared!

At eight years old, I saw a black boy I believe was around 12 get beat by 3 white kids. I ran hone when the beating started, scared to death. I didn't do anything to help him and it haunts me to this day. I told my parents, but it was too late to help him. I never heard how he turned out. We moved from there less than a year later.

I know what racism is Professor. It is clear and not speculative.

And implying racism because you are uncomfortable, without proof or such a low standard of proof apart from clearly seen proof is evil.

Were you ever present Ann when someone was beaten because of their race? Were you? A clear demonstration of racism?

What you have done in implying racism is reprehensible.

Here's what I wish: that everyone that calls "racist" someone or something without undeniable proof that the action was taken because racism - not "possibly racist" - would get ass-raped until they stopped throwing out the most vile chracterization next to "molester" as if they were describing a flavor.

Althouse wrote: Everything you hear these days is about fears and phobia and hate. I usually dismiss it as rhetoric, but I am starting to wonder if that isn’t what is motivating a great deal of the citizens of this country.

This is partly why I likened your blog to a blindfolded octopus (septapus as someone more astute than I pointed out). The tentacles have little suckers, some of which are attractive, some of which are repulsive. People get sucked in and "feel" emotions. Sometimes their opinions are changed, but often times they are just amplified. In a sense, that's how change is affected.

We are **$16+ TRILLION** in debt (and growing), our government is PRINTING MONEY to finance this debt, our liberties are being eroded, and the world is become more unstable. But you don't want to debate that. You want to talk about whether this silly video inflames racist passions.

The **point** of the video, to me, is that there are people who just want free stuff and a guaranteed easy life from the government.

I don't experience fear. I experience anger; anger that we allow this kind of disincentive to go on that only perpetuates a permanent underclass of broken people, communities and institutions. It makes me angry that lib/progs think that funding this dysfunction makes them somehow noble and righteous.

Oh, and I'm tired of paying for it out of my money confiscated by the government all the time I'm being told I am a heartless conservative.

And that is just as evil as the beating of that boy that I saw, beaten by real racists.

And yes, I question the character of anyone who so cavalierly throws it out.

So here's the question: knowing that it is so powerful a hate word and the destruction it can so easily cause when used - destruction beyond what the name-caller often may even intend - why do so many who call themselves liberal do it?

"I noticed because I saw traffic coming from there because, unlike the Freepers, at least they open up the pathway so readers can see the object of their criticism for themselves."

This is disingenuous. First, you have frequently not linked to posts you discuss without a care for your readers ability to easily see the object of your criticism for themselves. When you do so, you clearly state that you do it because you do not want to send traffic to them. It's malicious towards the writer, at the expense of information for a reader's decision-making. It would be reasonable to assume that you are miffed when others make an identical decision because it costs you traffic and you value traffic.

Second, although you acknowledge that you scrutinize your traffic, you do not acknowledge how you find things like the Free Republic article: through narcissistic screens that immediately notify you of any mention of your name on the internet. Both are hypervigilant practices.

It's OK, Ann. Nobody thinks you're racist, you've convincingly demonstrated your tolerant liberal bobs fides. After these last few postings, it's safe again for a nonracist like you to say things critical of Obama. If anyone thinks you're racist for voting for Romney because he is the better candidate, that's their problem, not yours.

Indeed, America now has a bi-racial, African/American president, who has the perfect family and is quite affable. And try as they might, Limbaugh, Ingraham, Malkin, Billo, Hannity, Savage, Nugent, Williams, Jr., Beck, Bortz, etc. can't make him out to be the ((( boogeyman ))).

I suspect Ann is mostly playing with us, but using the word "scared" which has many contexts. One, is being scared for your personal safety. Like Ann would be if she was walking down the street at night (or probably during the day) in a tough part of Detroit or Chicago and saw a couple of young black men approaching her.

Another, is being scared for your country. Like Ann would be if anyone got her to focus on the unemployment, poverty and crime in huge portions of some major cities.

So, I think Ann is using the second context to rile people up into thinking she is using the first context. Probably largely for her own entertainment, but it also draws attention to that poor woman and what it reflects about the present and future of our country. Of course, she could have started the conversation in a more direct and honest fashion, but perhas would not have gained the same level of attention.

That aside, who cares what commenters on some other blog say? Apparently, she took what was said last night as seriously as some of the regulars did. Protein Wisdom isn't one of the more moderate blogs in the Rightosphere; they're not quite ready to start guerilla warfare, but they're getting there.

OK, she has a POV; wrong, in my view, but, as I said to everybody else, a little perspective, Ann.

Like I said, it is not emotionalism, it is not hormonalism, it is pathology.

It is the pathology of, among other things, an irrational animus against those on the right.

That is why, despite being repeatedly mugged by reality and disgusted with the actions of others on the left, leading to the occasional appearance of becoming more moderate, if not conservative, on some matters, when really counts, she will turn about and embrace the left every time.

When push comes to shove -- as it has in recent weeks -- the inner lib/leftist comes out. She might have disappointment and disillusionment at leftism, but her antipathy and irrational prejudice against those on the right far exceeds any real change as an ultimate intellectual matter.

We have seen it with the knee-jerk lashing out, unhinged from reason or facts, with contempt and occasional animus that rivals AndyR. This is not cruel neutrality, this is not just playing devil's advocate, the truth is that this is the real deal.

No, better a Stalin or Mao or Ho Chi Minh be elected than anyone who might be authentically conservative, especially if she or he be a social conservative.

She might be embarrassed at the actions of her comrades, but in her heart she is still a fellow traveler. Which just makes it all the more irrational because there is a large part of her that sees and knows how intellectually corrupt and disasterous the left is.

As for many of those here -- we always knew that, despite the appearance of flirtation with Romney, despite a sincere disgust and disenchantment with Obama, she would still nevertheless rationalize a way to vote for him again.

So he's reinforcing my point! That video stands for a large group of people who really are the problem and voters ought to wake up and get scared!

Now you are going to the other extreme with this. The commenter would very well want that inner city person to get an education and get a job and not be dependent on the govt. It should scare people that the government is so inefficient that there are so many of them in inner cities. May be that fear will get them to vote for politicians who will do something to move them and other people out of there and into being productive citizens. Isn't that what that commenter have meant?

There was a segment on Meghan Kelley interview with a coal miner who had just been laid off and there were many like him -- she mentioned they were not just unhappy or sad, but that there was fear in their eyes about what they will do next and how they will support their families. Fear is a good motivator to get out the funk one is in.

Maybe Althouse should just step back and take a deep breath as they say. She is getting overwhelmed and piled on. I'd just take a break and let everyone get it out of their system. In the meantime she can gather her thoughts and maybe get a better perspective. Just a suggestion.

I have no further comment on you noticing that there is a large pool of public sentiment in America toward social integration of black folks, after they were held in bondage by the civil laws, and that this may affect the upcoming election.

Rush may be a little racist at times as a member of old school Missouri, so maybe you feel it's necessary to shame him and you're being honest about your feelings and how if he really wants Obama to lose, he should be more careful. The unholy alliance between the Old Civil rights crowd, the progressives screaming racism, and the daytime and Oprah crowd could cause problems. They are guiding that sentiment, and perhaps women may be more susceptible to it.

As for Barack Obama, though, and his record: I can't imagine you have too many other good reasons for defending him. Fiscally and practically, for all your defense of free speech and independent thought, Obama's policies represent a clear threat to much political and economic liberty. He's the worst of the 60's in many ways, and you call him on a lot of it.

I'd offer this to someone of a sharp and independent mind, who had a part in changing our institutions: Social change is being driven ever faster to include ever more groups under the banner of freedom. This could come to deeply misalign public sentiment and where the man (and women, and black folks, and gays, and transgender..ad infinitum) on the street find themselves...which is to say further and further from our political, legal, and social institutions and the people in those institutions.

Garage. "I always enjoyed the line "well you don't live amongst black people so cut the racists some slack!""

It is probably just an example of the old saw that northerners love the black race but are afraid of black people whereas southerners hate the black race but love black people. Yet another way of noting that you dont get it. That you havent had to give it much thought because you did not live through the trauma of the civil rights movement, or take sides in a way that could effect your livelihood or your safety. That it is an abstraction to you, an abstraction that always shows you and your moral toughness in a good and favorable light.

I think in her rush to push racism where most of us didn't think that it was, I think that Ann may have missed a bigger issue - who paid for the FreeGovernmentCellPhones.net and ObamaPhone.net websites? (The Shady Ethics of ‘The Obama Phone’)

Was there any government funding involved? If so, I would think that this could be seen as using tax dollars (or money borrowed by us from the Chinese) to advertise that the President, running for reelection, was giving away free cellphones - with the implication that if you vote for him, you will get even more free stuff. Maybe a house to replace the house that you bought when Dodd, Franks, and their Dem colleages pushed the banks to lend to those who couldn't afford to pay for their loans in the first place, and that was lost when the ARM kicked in. More government supported meals would be nice too. Meals, housing, iPhones, what else would be nice? Maybe a nice new set of wheels, courtesy of Government Motors. But, since that would likely be electric (i.e. a Volt), need electricity paid for too - I think that there are already programs for that, just have to spend a bit more tax money to advertise them.

But, notice how the left has so successfully turned this from what it was really about (the entitlement mentality of so many Obama supporters) into a racial issue (where they claim unquestioned moral superiority, despite most being members of the racist party over most of the last 200 years). And, yes, ignore the question of whether federal money was being spent to essentially advertise Obama's candidacy.

"I don't experience fear. I experience anger; anger that we allow this kind of disincentive to go on that only perpetuates a permanent underclass of broken people, communities and institutions. It makes me angry that lib/progs think that funding this dysfunction makes them somehow noble and righteous. Oh, and I'm tired of paying for it out of my money confiscated by the government all the time I'm being told I am a heartless conservative."

I agree, which is why I want Romney to get out in front of the racial stuff and get that message clear of the repulsive material that is attaching to it.

Minds are being affected now. I'm sending an alarm, but then I'm hearing denial, not from you, Ken, but from so many others here. They don't want to believe the effect it has on undecided-type votes and people who are sensitive about below-the-surface racism, so they're just saying it's crazy/stupid/shut up.

This is a really, really bad dynamic for Romney.

And when he loses, the hardcore conservatives will say it was because he didn't get hardcore enough. And people like me will lose any interest in voting for Republicans.

It's already the case that half of the stuff they are for, I am against. And yet I will consider voting for them. I voted for Scott Walker twice. I voted for Ron Johnson.

It's actually quite pathetic and sad.

Democrats don't care. They're happy to reap the votes of social liberals who would prefer conservative economics but see the GOP as toxic.

I'm originally from a small farming community in Indiana. Last time I was there I was amused to see a German Baptist man (they're much like the Amish), his horse and buggy pulled over, helping a black guy push his stalled car out of the intersection. I wish I could have gotten a picture of that.

Thing is, racism will never be wiped out. All you can do is make sure there isn't government approved racism. You can't read people's hearts and minds, Ann. It isn't fair. If racism is actually down to secret code words and playing a video tape over and over of one foolish woman, then I say we've come a long way.

I read racist comments on articles all the time along with other vile, heartless comments. I dare say the people making those comments would never dream of saying them out loud in the real world.

Gotta go with "Jim Treacher" on this. If allowing people to say what they want to interviewers is "racist" whenever the interviewees turn out to be loud, obnoxious idiots who also belong to a minority group, then interviewing people is racist. If playing clips -- sound clips, which unless you have extra-special ears of a kind I've not encountered, don't convey race -- of said loud, obnoxious idiots is "racist," then allowing people to say what they want to a journalist is "racist," because there's always the peril that someone who isn't a straight white man will say something monumentally stupid.

Someone way up the other thread made the obvious point: Why is this racist, not sexist? Or both? Or, for that matter, bad-dentistry-ist?

Charles Dickens, that great author and document-er of human nature, wrote a very insightful point into A Christmas Carol.In the wonderful Alastair Sim 1950's movie version, the Ghost of Christmas Present opens his robe to reveal a cowering little boy and little girl, clinging to his legs and looking up with sorrowful, pleading eyes.

He says to Scrooge, "The girl is Want, and the boy Ignorance. Fear the girl, but fear the boy more."

Exactly correct.

Ignorance (e.g. the Obamaphone lady) is to be feared more than Want, because there is less that you can do about innate Ignorance, and beyond a point, it is not fixable, only containable. You can make it worse, however.

Genetically determined potential max IQ is an uncomfortable fact. It can be developed as far as possible with good nutrition and good schooling and good behavior and effort, but eventually, for an individual person, it reaches a limit, much like Height eventually does.

So what do we do with the Ignorant half of the bell curve?

Give them stuff for free? Hide from them the true source of the largess (the taxpayer) so instead of feeling grateful, they feel entitled and angry and come to worship the pols who appear to be giving the handouts from their bottomless bag of goodies?

That's the way of Obama and his ilk.

Or do we strive to once again (and yeah, I remember it in my lifetime) to make all work noble, especially those 'dirty jobs' that can be done even by the Ignorant? Restore sense of pride in self-reliance and work ethic. And gratitude for true charity. Real traditional American values, in other words.

That's the America of Romney/Ryan.It won't be easy to get there. But some of us think it is worth one more try.

"I think the question is how you get people to be self-sufficient. I don't think there's a good or obvious answer for that.

Be angry with them or mock them or blame them is not going to do it."

But if you sacrifice some people's freedom by threat of force and taxation in order to give transfer payments to the woman in the video, and the perhaps millions like her with free phones and food stamps, then you lose liberty overall.

Barack Obama's policies are clearly NOT how you make people self-sufficient. That's the crying shame about this election.

I still don't think much of white, mainstream America gets that this is what community organizing IS. It's kind of a hustle. That's what this election is about, and America can do much better regardless of whether or not black folks are included in the moral imagination of white mainstream America.

Accept the symbolism of this presidency if you'd like, but Obama's policies are just poison for the economy and they can't ever fulfill what he's promising. They will ultimately lead to less freedom and less equality amongst the less free.

I think the word "fear" is misused. No one but the mentally unbalanced casts his vote out of fear in this country.

Neverthess, Ann, you raise a good point about your status as an undecided voter, and it's something I do find scary. You have laid out quite well over these months and years how Obama and current-day liberalism is not working out. You have artculated their defects better than many of your conservative readers can, better than I can.

But you are still undecided. Unlike a commenter in the other thread on this Obamaphone issue, I do not think this is a recent trend. This is a disturbing fact that has been part of our political landscape for a while: Obama is objectively a bad president. Modern liberalism has no plan -- or desire, it seems -- to deal with our problems. Yet, if even the most conservative friendly polls are to be believed, the race is neck-and-neck. It is beyond my ability to understand how this can be so. But there it is.

Shiloh's ridiculous gloating may be misplaced, in that Romney may indeed be elected, but so what? Romney should win by a landslide, but that seems a faint hope, and hope is a sentiment that should not guide our actions. The reality is that about half of this nation thinks what is going on with our economy, our society, and the world around us is just fine, sir ... can I have some more?

Minds are being affected now. I'm sending an alarm, but then I'm hearing denial, not from you, Ken, but from so many others here. They don't want to believe the effect it has on undecided-type votes and people who are sensitive about below-the-surface racism, so they're just saying it's crazy/stupid/shut up.

But this is just silly. You are probably the sole self-declared undecided voter in the entire United States who listens to Rush and reads the Drudge Report daily.

Will the video (the video, mind you, not the audio, which is all Rush could play, and which has no racial element at all, unless you have those skin-tone-sensitive ears) have an effect on the election? Possibly. But not because of Rush Limbaugh. Nearly everyone listening to Limbaugh has her mind made up long since.

Althouse, you're being ridiculous and you should re-think things and apologize for your ridiculousness.1. Above all, what you really seem to be saying is that you, Ann Althouse, "whose rational mind[s] would reject explicit racial material can be emotionally manipulated." You dislike confronting the reality that you see a black person doing something stupid and ugly, your response is to be disusted at yourself for drawing an emotional and racist image in your mind, and you then overcompensate by lashing out at the people showing the imagine.You're giving the lie to your excellent free speech arguments from a couple weeks back. There, you rightly pointed out that freedom was an absolute, and it was ultimately the goal of free speech to allow the listener the freedom to here and decide. You’re failing hard, and ultimately saying you think some things are just too emotional for people to listen and handle. Yuck.2. You’re trying to make some distinction that it's "OK" to show the video, but "not ok" to show it too much, and yet you approvingly linked to someone saying it was basically "not ok" to show it or think about it.There's no distinction to be made. It's a fact that that particular black person said those particular things, and it's entirely reasonable to talk about it. Period. End of story.

Also, Yes, the video obviously has a racial component and stirs racial fears, but how can such things ever be dealt with unless we think them through and discuss them?

That's always seemed the absurdity to me of the liberal mindset that anything negative has to be ignored and it'll just end up going away. That we'll somehow have a racism free society by ignoring every stupid thing that people do.

No. We aren't going to eliminate racism by pretending it doesn't exist and pretending there aren't different views among different racial groups, and that these views are all compatible with each other.

It's not really a matter of race, it's a matter of culture. I'm disgusted by the mentality that particular black person shows, and from my teaching days, I know it's a mentality that's prevalent among many poor black people. On the other hand, I've met lots of poor black people that work their asses off. In any case, my point is that there's a racial and/or cultural component to this thing that should be addressed and understood.

Calling divergent views racism, or calling someone racist for holding views about the attitudes of people, rather than their inherent capabilities, strikes me as a huge disservice to the cause of eliminating true racism and racial animosity in general.

Simply put, the guy (Car) you (Althouse) quote as saying you should be scared to go into a city is right. But I don't take what he says as racism in a meaningful sense of the word.

That is, he doesn't sound happy about it. He seems to be recognizing reality as he sees it. Which is necessary, because we'd be better off in a better reality, in which a significant sub-culture within the American black population wasn't lawless, hopeless, dangerous and dependent on the rest of us.

The important questions are why and who's really hurt by this reality. Well, the why is that the sort of "that's racist! You can't say that!" nonsense that Althouse is pushing, coupled with big government "help" for the "poor unfortunates" is exactly what's created and kept so many as "poor unfortunates".

And the "who is really hurt" answer is the real kicker. Besides the "poor unfortunates" themselves, the people that seem to be most hurt are the vast majority of black people, who do work hard, want to succeed, and want to better themselves.

That is, the people that are really getting screwed are black people. And my guess is that the vast majority of folks you're calling or insinuating as racist ultimately really want those black people to be better off.

I know I would like them to have better, safer, richer, more successful and happier lives. Because of that, there's no way on earth I'm voting for Obama, a guy who's pushing dependence and creating economic chaos on a massive scale.

Genetically determined potential max IQ is an uncomfortable fact. It can be developed as far as possible with good nutrition and good schooling and good behavior and effort, but eventually, for an individual person, it reaches a limit, much like Height eventually does.

So what do we do with the Ignorant half of the bell curve?

Well, perhaps consign you to the left side?

SHTSI, you evidently do not know what "ignorance" (oh, sorry, it should, per you, be "Ignorance," with a capital "I") means. People who are ignorant are people who don't know something. That doesn't mean that they can't learn it. Why, even you might learn the rudiments of capitalization, given time and careful schooling.

Andy R. said...You do have a highly emotive mental picture of those terrible black people, the very brain zone Rush was stimulating.

I wonder if the people here would all deny the Willie Horton ad was doing the same thing. "It can't be racist, it's just one guy. He just happens to be black!"

All these coded racial appeals from the Republican Party are all one big coincidence. Southern strategy? Never heard of it.

Just read Drudge each day, there is a constant stream of news stories about black people acting badly. Drudge is an obsessive race baiter, it is how he makes his living. There is no shortage of stories about white people acting badly in the news but they never make it to Drudge's page, unless they are democrat politicians. Similarly Hannity routinely brings on the dumbest black commentators he can find to embarress themselves, ignoring all the dumb whites available, other than Dick Morris.

This being said, I don't think Drudge, Hannity and Rush should be confused with the Republican party. In recent years the Republican party has largely avoided overt race baiting because it doesn't work for them in the long run. In the days of Atwater it was a better electoral strategy and to deny the party didn't use race baiting as an electoral strategy at this time is stupid. Politicians use what is available to win.

If playing clips -- sound clips, which unless you have extra-special ears of a kind I've not encountered, don't convey race

It would be interesting to learn what the "Rush was appealing to racism" and "the right uses code to appeal to racism" crowd believes the various races of the commenters here to be based on their written words. Some have self-identified, of course, and some have pictures, but for most, all we have are their written words.

Can you all tell who is white, who is American black, who is European black, who is African black, who is African white, who is Latino, who is Asian, who is Native American, etc.?

What are the secret code words that The Hat alludes to that indicate the commenter is white (and therefore inherently a racist)? Who amongst us writes black so as to provide a dead-giveaway as to their race?

Really, I think our problems are caused at least as much by the fact that we can't argue or disagree with each other without feeling self-righteous, angry and resorting to insults, as much as they are due to any particular ideology or policies.

Teaching everyone critical thinking and argumentation skills in the primary grades will do a lot more for this nation than cutting or raising taxes.

Perhaps we should not require that conservative pundits and other opinion sources be pure as the driven snow on all occasions. After all, no such standard exists on the Left – let us not forget that the Democrats(which includes Obama) play the race card incessantly and enthusiastically. And they have no need for "code words" or "dog whistles" for their more casually flagrant racial scams.

Limbaugh's huge audience provides a valuable platform for the conservative message. His occasional lapse into equivalent demagoguery shouldn't be used as an excuse to vote for Obama or as a blanket condemnation of GOP candidates.

"Were you ever present Ann when someone was beaten because of their race? Were you? A clear demonstration of racism?"

My nephew, who lives in Chicago, was beaten by some black kids when he was a teenager. In response he just stayed away from that park. That way the parks are taken over by those who are willing to use force to make their point. Maybe in the 1930s, they were white. They aren't any more.

He is now in his 30s and his step daughter is harassed by black kids in her school every week. Her mother is still having to go to the school every week or two. When he can afford it, they will move her to Catholic school, like everyone else who can afford it.

His wife is staunchly anti-abortion but has bought into a fake story about Romney having owned a medical waste company that disposed of aborted fetuses so she will probably, like you, help elect Obama.

And so it goes as the country goes down the tubes. Up in white bread Madison, you can afford silly racial theories.

Another, is being scared for your country. Like Ann would be if anyone got her to focus on the unemployment, poverty and crime in huge portions of some major cities.

Many years of the best of Progressive thought and policies have doomed the inhabitants of many inner city populations. Does the fact that most of the folks in that population are minorities make me a racist for saying so? I will paraphrase something I read elsewhere: The Progressives have managed to achieve something that 200 years of slavery was not able to accomplish – the destruction of the African-American family.

That is why, despite being repeatedly mugged by reality and disgusted with the actions of others on the left, leading to the occasional appearance of becoming more moderate, if not conservative, on some matters, when really counts, she will turn about and embrace the left every time.

True for knee-jerk liberals but I think not true about our hostess. Her past votes have included a significant amount of GOP candidates. I learned this some months ago after I made a similar accusation in a comment on this blog

Michelle Dulak Thomson said..Well, perhaps consign you to the left side?

First, probably not good to start your rebuttal with an ad hominem.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...SHTSI, you evidently do not know what "ignorance" (oh, sorry, it should, per you, be "Ignorance," with a capital "I") means.

Exactly, smartass. When you are writing about Ignorance, the concept/abstract category, or Want, you DO fucking capitalize it. I am using them in the sense of Plato's Eternal Ideas. Look it up if you don't believe me you ignorant (as per your definition following) ass.

People who are ignorant are people who don't know something.

That's one of many definitions of "ignorant", though clearly not the one I intended. It is the one YOU chose to create your straw man response.

That doesn't mean that they can't learn it.

Actually, it does. If one has a 70 IQ, I guarantee you they CANNOT, NOT EVER, learn advanced calculus, organic chemistry, complex logic and reasoning, and any number of things. Not with all the motivation in the world, anymore than you can will yourself taller.The Armed Forces know this. That's why they require one to pass an IQ test, geared to weed out those below around 85 IQ. Can't trust those types to have your back in a firefight, regardless of training.

Why, even you might learn the rudiments of capitalization, given time and careful schooling

By the way, Plato's Eternal Ideas are BS. I'm only using them to refer to the literary device, often used when discussing Plato, or discussing Man ( an in Mankind). Very common to capitalize the first letter. Lets the reader know you are talking about a high level concept version of the subject, the aggregate, the 100,000 foot level, as in Ignorance, per say.

If one has a 70 IQ, I guarantee you they CANNOT, NOT EVER, learn advanced calculus, organic chemistry, complex logic and reasoning, and any number of things. Not with all the motivation in the world, anymore than you can will yourself taller.The Armed Forces know this. That's why they require one to pass an IQ test, geared to weed out those below around 85 IQ. Can't trust those types to have your back in a firefight, regardless of training.

Ahem. I presume the "Ignorant half of the bell curve" is the half below IQ 100, which is supposed to be the point on which the curve is centered. IQ 85 would be one SD down; IQ 70 would be two SDs down. The chunk of the curve between the midpoint and the first SD below looks as though it includes an awful lot of people. Are they all Ignorant? Or are you referring to IQs of 85 and 70 because you don't really mean to say that half of all your fellow-citizens are capital-I Ignorant?

(I am surprised to learn that Height belongs among the Platonic Ideas right along with Ignorance. I confess that I don't remember that from The Republic, but it's been awhile.)

"Calling divergent views racism, or calling someone racist for holding views about the attitudes of people, rather than their inherent capabilities, strikes me as a huge disservice to the cause of eliminating true racism and racial animosity in general.

Simply put, the guy (Car) you (Althouse) quote as saying you should be scared to go into a city is right. But I don't take what he says as racism in a meaningful sense of the word.

"That is, he doesn't sound happy about it. He seems to be recognizing reality as he sees it. Which is necessary, because we'd be better off in a better reality, in which a significant sub-culture within the American black population wasn't lawless, hopeless, dangerous and dependent on the rest of us."

This is spot on. Except for the fact of Carin being a him.

She lives in Detroit. She is familiar with areas that the police will no longer go into.

She's not racist, and she's not overly emotional. She simply recognizes the taker mindset, whom it benefits politically, and how at odds it is with the country many of us believe is unmoored from its founding principles.

Screaming "racist"! at that is, frankly, a rape of language -- and an intentional one, as well. It is meant to chill open discussion, while simultaneously shielding the accuser from future broadsides by others using the same tactic.

I don't think Ann is a coward. But in this instance, I believe her arguments are both dangerous and cowardly.

Thanks, student X. I was going to post what you said pretty much verbatim.

Ann - student X is right. You have NO idea what real racism is all about. Stay overnight in a house at Fenkell and Greenfield in Detroit, making sure the neighborhood people see you. You'll learn really quick.

Social liberalism, i presume, means a philosophy embracing abortion and gay marriage coupled with a doubling down on those things that have caused black illegitimacy to grow from 17% to 75% and white illegitimacy to quadruple. All in forty years. That is the social liberalism that turns away from the woman with the free cell phone and focuses the anger and shame elsewhere. Smug. Disgraceful. Racist in the most vile form.

Speaking of fears and phobias, sometimes I think that perhaps AA's votes for Obama--and clearly she is going to vote for him again--come as a result of her own fear that she is becoming one of "them," the Drudges, the Limbaughs, the Libertarians, those wingnuts who sometimes actually deserve the opprobrium thrown their way.

For a boomer artist intellectual to throw in to that culture -- this is difficult, often an impossibility.

Ahem. I presume the "Ignorant half of the bell curve" is the half below IQ 100, which is supposed to be the point on which the curve is centered.

100 is perhaps the center of an "all humans on the planet" aggregation, but it is different depending on what subsets of "all humans" you take. Yeah. That's right.

And who said anything about an ignorant "half"? Oh that's right. You did. I didn't. Straw man #2.

IQ 85 would be one SD down; IQ 70 would be two SDs down. The chunk of the curve between the midpoint and the first SD below looks as though it includes an awful lot of people. Are they all Ignorant?

Nope. You are arguing against your own straw man, though I do understand why. Easier to tell yourself you scoring points.

The left half of the bell curve is just that - the left half.

Or are you referring to IQs of 85 and 70 because you don't really mean to say that half of all your fellow-citizens are capital-I Ignorant?

Again, you are debating your own straw man. I gave no indication of what IQ I thought would start the "ignorant" range. As with "when during the 9 months, is abortion no longer OK?" issue, it's hard to pin down precisely. For IQ, I'd say around 70 is in ignorant territory, though I would not want my plane flown by an 85 IQ pilot.

(I am surprised to learn that Height belongs among the Platonic Ideas right along with Ignorance.

As am I. It is your straw man #3. Are you getting paid by the straw man, per chance?

I said height is like IQ. There is a genetic limit we are all born with, that we cannot stretch beyond. We can only make the best use of what we have.

However, "Height", the noun, could, I suppose, be thought of and discussed as a philosophical concept, like any other noun can, and we could then discuss things like its being "relative" and such. Is that what you want to do? I only wanted to use it a well known genetically determined item, "ones height", and point out that, though not as well known, IQ is being found to be kind of like that. Not anything like the "anyone can learn anything if they just put their mind and effort to it" meme that most folks believe, and have never questioned.

I confess that I don't remember that from The Republic, but it's been awhile.)

I'm sure it's not in there. By the way, that book title would be more properly translated, in todays word use, as "The State". Makes it a little more properly scary, as it should be, to all freedom lovers.

Do you doubt, Ann, there are a lot of Black people with that entitlement mentality? I don't. I've also seen that same entitlement mentality in whites. I hate the entitlement mentality.

But I hate even more the leftist programs that have created it. That have enabled these people to sink so low in human dignity.

You are being played, Ann. Your anger should go to those who created the environment. It would be better if these people were building pyramids for their welfare checks than crowing about generous Obama (or the king like attribution of Obama as the leftist government).

Women always had the right to vote. A constitutional amendment simply ensured its universality. The women's suffrage movement was about ensuring a universal right. It was not an effort to address a missing right. The same was true for civil and human rights, including equal rights for black, white, red, etc. slaves.

In my personal experience over the last 30 years, there is more racism emanating from blacks than whites, and it seems to be getting progressively worse. But somehow the left always sees 1960's era Birmingham just around the corner.

We are **$16+ TRILLION** in debt (and growing), our government is PRINTING MONEY to finance this debt, our liberties are being eroded, and the world is become more unstable. But you don't want to debate that. You want to talk about whether this silly video inflames racist passions.

The **point** of the video, to me, is that there are people who just want free stuff and a guaranteed easy life from the government.

The point. Which as I pointed out in the other thread, has been completely missed. But if the aggrieved wish to proclaim racism, who am I to prevent them. this act too, is in the theater of the absurd.

I'll buy that the people making videos and ads may well be choosing racist tropes, but I don't buy that the response is necessarily racist; and I'll be danged if I concede the moral high ground to liberals on this.

1) The people who advise campaigns, and make ads, are often pretty slimy, cynical people. So, yes, I'll accept it as reasonable to say that they are willing to play to race.

And the candidates are usually either stupid or equally as cynical.

2) But...even if you accuse the makers of this video of playing to race, that doesn't mean the folks responding to it, are guilty of racism. I see the bad-teeth woman whose happy with a free phone, and whether her skin is white or black, it's the same to me.

3) I think the real division isn't race, it's class. Folks who are middle- or upper-class, if they are even partly rational, know that it isn't about race, it's about being "other." It isn't about skin color, but whether that other person shares, to a sufficient degree, your own experiences and values. And those of us who have lived our lives in the middle class, we don't really know what life is like for someone like the bad-teeth woman in the video; and if she's white, that's still true.

3) As far as moral high ground? If you want an example of liberal racism, look at how the media are cutting President Obama so much slack. A lot of folks say it's because they want him to win. That's true, to an extent. But I think a good portion of it is because they don't want to beat up on the first black President. If it had been John Kerry or John Edwards, instead of Barack Obama, I assert that the media would be tougher on him. Why are they giving Obama a pass? Because he's the first black president. Why isn't that racism?

And if that's too complex a thought, then let's try this. For all those who point to the Willie Horton ad, I respond, what about the James Byrd ads against Bush, in which they depict a black man being dragged to his death---and this was somehow Bush's fault?

Remember: Bush was governor of Texas; and the killers of James Byrd were...wait for it...sentenced to DEATH...and Bush was fine with that. And yet, somehow, Bush was not sufficiently outraged about Byrd's death? That's not a liberal-created appeal to race?

So he's reinforcing my point! That video stands for a large group of people who really are the problem and voters ought to wake up and get scared!

This is a problem with you, Ann. Same thing when you insulted the Professor, then denied it.

He's saying the race panderers caused the problem. That's right, maybe people like you. People who have pushed the liberal agenda that the reason people are doing it is because they haven't had a fair shot.

Some, including people like me who were bused into inner city schools, believe the liberals are screwing things up, and hey, guess what, possibly especially screwing over the blacks.

Why don't you think about that. And yes, blacks overwhelmingly voted for Obama, instead of Hillary. Why aren't you complaining about THAT racism?

Get it through your head. You have two standards. One for the behavior of whites, and another for the behavior of blacks. What's that called?

Let's be clear about something. You can have a massively high IQ and be ignorant. Ignorance merely means you do not know the facts.

I also do not believe IQ is related to character, or human dignity.

Maybe it is more easy to destroy people's character if they have low IQ, but I doubt that too. I think people have to be accepting of the bullshit they are fed, and intelligent people can have poor character too.

Nor is this a skin color thing. First generation Hispanics picking the fields are ignorant, and work incredibly hard.

Actually, while she seems full of herself, no doubt, I think it comes from insecurity. That's why she couldn't bring herself to admit her mistake when she tore down that professor, insulting him. And let's be clear, by her own reasoning she owed him an apology, but refused to parse her own sentence to see how she insulted him.

That's why she had to lie as a child about something she didn't know.

Insecurity, and the fear of being wrong.

I've seen this same thing before in so many weak minded, insecure people. An inability to have the honor of admitting a mistake, because of their inherent insecurity. They would rather hurt others than admit their own mistakes.

All these coded racial appeals from the Republican Party are all one big coincidence. Southern strategy? Never heard of it.

Andy, I think there is this idea of collective guilt Karma flowing around in modern day society. I propose collective goodness Karma, because I think it's underrated.

We start with the forming of the Republican Party, and the freeing of the slaves. That cost a few hundreds of thousands of white lives to free the slaves. So the Karma on the "R" side is overflowing.

Now let us look back to the "D" side. Well, they didn't want to free the slaves. And they have a pretty dismal record in the south, and with civil rights.

So there is a lot of bad karma to work off there too. And let's not forget the "Man in the House rule," that the one sane Democrat, Patrick Moynihan, warned about. And how it's necessary to have a family. Well, all those years of trying, and the situation is no better. In fact, one might say D's have fostered a culture of dependence.

I'd say before you throw stones at R's, you take a careful assessment of what the D's have done.

You can't possibly be serious about this being a possible deciding factor. Even if you had a valid point (I didn't listen to Rush's use of the video), you have to admit that this is hardly something done only be "EVIL REPUBLICANS!".